<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
  <head>
	<title>Invention Calculator help files - Index</title>
	<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="InventionCalculator.css" />
  </head>

  <body>
	<h2>Invention Calculator help - Index</h2>
	<p>Welcome to the help file of the Invention Calculator. If you care about legal stuff or version information, click <a href="Legal.html">here</a> or <a href="Versions.html">here</a>. Otherwise, select one of the following items:</p>
	<p>Introduction:</p>
	<ul>
	  <li><a href="#What">What does it do?</a></li>
	  <li><a href="#Using">Using the invention calculator</a></li>
	  <li><a href="#Prices">Prices of items</a></li>
	  <li><a href="#Filtering">Filtering items</a></li>
	  <li><a href="#ShoppingList">Shopping list</a></li>
	  <li><a href="#InventionResults">Invention results</a></li>
	</ul>

	<p>Available screens:</p>
	<ul>
	  <li><a href="MainScreen.html">Main screen</a></li>
	  <li><a href="Columns.html">Columns</a></li>
	  <li><a href="Filter.html">Filter</a></li>
	  <li><a href="ShowInfo.html">Show Info</a></li>
	  <li><a href="Organize.html">File - Organize items</a></li>
	  <li><a href="EditItems.html">Edit - Items</a></li>
	  <li><a href="Decryptors.html">Decryptors</a></li>
	  <li><a href="ImportPrices.html">Import prices</a></li>
	  <li><a href="EditSettings.html">Edit - Settings</a>
		<ul>
		  <li><a href="SettingsSettings.html">Settings</a></li>
		  <li><a href="DefaultSettings.html">Default values</a></li>
		  <li><a href="ColorSettings.html">Colors</a></li>
		  <li><a href="Formula.html">Invention formula</a></li>
		  <li><a href="Skills.html">Skills &amp; implants</a></li>
		  <li><a href="Installations.html">Installations</a></li>
		</ul>
	  </li>
	  <li><a href="ShoppingList.html">Extra - Shopping list</a></li>
	  <li><a href="InventionResults.html">Extra - Invention results</a></li>
	  <li><a href="AddResults.html">Add invention results</a></li>
	  <li><a href="RemoveResults.html">Remove invention results</a></li>
	  <li><a href="AddConfiguration.html">Add configuration</a></li>
	</ul>

	<h4><a name="What">What does it do?</a></h4>
	  <p>The invention calculator calculates the profit that you will make with invention, simple as that. There are already quite a few programs and spreadsheets that do exactly that, but when I tried to use them, I found them to be either incorrect or very user unfriendly. So the Invention Calculator project was born. This program will list all the costs and revenues you'll make when doing invention, and will show this in a clear and precise way. Note that the profit that the invention calculator shows, is an <strong>estimated average</strong>. The actual profit you'll make varies wildly depending on the actual result of each invention job as well as the exact price of all the components.</p>
	<h4><a name="Using">Using the Invention Calculator</a></h4>
	  <p>The invention calculator is very easy to use. All important information is immediately shown on the <a href="MainScreen.html">main screen</a>, which is shown when you start the application. Simply select the item which you want to use as a base for your invention attempts, enter necessary data such as how many runs the BPC has, what decryptor you're going to use, price of the Tech 2 item, etc., and the application will calculate how much profit you'll make, if any.</p>
	<h4><a name="Prices">Prices of items</a></h4>
	  <p>The calculations that the invention calculator does are based on the prices of all items that you provide. These prices should be entered in the <a href="EditItems.html">Edit - Items screen</a>, where you can either edit the price of an item directly, or import it from EVE-Central. On the <a href="MainScreen.html">main screen</a> (box 4) you can also enter the price of the Tech 2 item which your invention will produce. On all locations where you can enter a price, you can use k, m, and b to insert 3, 6 or 9 zeroes at once.</p>
	<h4><a name="Filtering">Filtering items</a></h4>
	  <p>The list on the <a href="MainScreen.html">main screen</a> can show all Tech 1 items, but you are probably only interested in a specific item or group of items. For this reason you can set a filter, which will only show the items that you find relevant. You can set this filter by pressing the "Filter" button, which will open the <a href="Filter.html">filter screen</a>. There, you can specifically indicate which items you want to appear in the list. This filter itself is based on categories, subcategories and groups, and each item falls in one of these. The exact details of this categorizing can be found and altered in the <a href="Organize.html">organize screen</a>.</p>
	<h4><a name="ShoppingList">Shopping list</a></h4>
	   <p>One of the extras of the invention calculator is a <a href="ShoppingList.html">shopping list</a>. The shopping list can be used to determine which items should be bought to build a number of Tech 2 items, or what decryptors and datacores are needed to invent certain items. The shopping list will combine all the materials that you add to it, so if you plan to run multiple invention jobs on different items that all share the same datacores, the shopping list will only show one entry for those two datacores. The shopping list will also break down items that you can build. This includes Tech 1 items, components and R.A.M. needed to build a Tech 2 item. However, it does not do that automatically, you have to specify which items you want to manufacture yourself (and what ME the BPO has that you're using) in the <a href="EditItems.html">Edit - Items screen</a>.</p>
	<h4><a name="InventionResults">Invention results</a></h4>
	   <p>The invention calculator can also be used to store <a href="InventionResults">invention results</a>. You can store all your invention results, based on the Tech 2 item and the configuration of your invention. The configuration is simply a combination of all possible factors that could play a role in your invention job. This can be used to check the accuracy of the <a href="Formula.html">invention formula</a>, or simply to see how lucky you have been inventing a certain item in a certain configuration.</p>
  </body>
</html>
